Americans who don’t know where Ukraine is are more likely to support military intervention – poll

Those Americans who struggle to correctly point out even the continent Ukraine is located on are more likely to support US military intervention to resolve the crisis and the advancement of US national security interests, a new survey has revealed.

A newly published poll, conducted by three Ivy League professors,
revealed that only one out of six Americans surveyed could
pinpoint where Ukraine actually is on a world map. The survey
also showed a worrying correlation in answers - the further the
person thought Ukraine is from its actual geographical location,
the more likely he or she was to support military intervention in
a sovereign state.

In their study, conducted between March 28-31, Kyle Dropp of
Dartmouth College, Joshua D. Kertzer of Harvard University, and
Thomas Zeitzoff of Princeton asked 2,066 Americans where Ukraine
was on a map and how they think Washington should respond to the
crisis there.

The survey was conducted to “see where Americans think
Ukraine is and to learn if this knowledge (or lack thereof) is
related to their foreign policy views,” the authors
explained in a Washington Post blog.

The results, combined in a heat map representing where
respondents thought Ukraine was, show that only 16 percent of
Americans correctly identified Ukraine on a map, with the median
respondent being about 1,800 miles off. Some people thought
Ukraine could be located as far south as Argentina or Australia,
or as north as Finland.

In terms of demographics, the 18- to 24-year-old group provided a
more accurate geo-location with 27 percent correctly identifying
Ukraine, as compared to 14 percent of the 65+ year-olds group.

Gender correlations showed that 20 percent of males were
successful at singling out Ukraine, while women had a 13 percent
success rate.

US servicemen and their families also struggled to locate Ukraine
on a map, with only 16.1 percent answering correctly.
Non-military households had a 16 percent success rate.
Self-identified independents secured the highest rating, with 29
percent correctly locating the Eastern European country.

When it came to political association, both Democrats (14 percent
correct) and Republicans (15 percent correct) struggled to
pinpoint the country.

College graduates also failed the geography exam, with only 21
percent answering correctly. Non-college graduates answered
correctly 13 percent of the time.

“The proportion of college grads who could correctly identify
Ukraine is only slightly higher than the proportion of Americans
who told Pew that President Obama was Muslim in August
2010,” the authors pointed out.

The authors also argue that accuracy in determining the location
of Ukraine suggests public opinion predisposition on military
foreign involvement abroad. In their assessment, respondents were
asked a variety of questions about what they thought about the
current situation in Ukraine, and how they would want to see
Washington react.

“The further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from
its actual location, the more they wanted the US to intervene
militarily, the greater the threat they saw Russia as posing to
US interests, and the more they thought that using force would
advance US national security interests,” the researchers
concluded.